


Waking Up Tired

by Ophelia Coelridge (daemonluna)



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-02-02
Updated: 2002-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:14:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemonluna/pseuds/Ophelia%20Coelridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe never would let anything go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up Tired

Another gig over and done, another empty hotel room waiting for him, and Billy should have slept like the dead.

The adrenaline high had worn off hours ago, and he was hung over and bone-deep, nauseous, sleep-for-twenty-hours-straight tired. A stare shouldn’t have been able to wake him.

But it did.

Joe sat perched on the edge of the dresser, smirking sardonically. "Wakie, wakie, Billy-boy."

Fuck. Billy wasn't going to open his eyes. He wasn't going to move. He was going to pull the shitty foam pillow over his head, go back to sleep, and Joe could just go fuck himself.

It was the uneasy shiver down the back of his neck that did it.

Billy opened his eyes. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said accusingly.

"Like you don’t know," Joe snorted. He kicked one booted foot back and forth, and casually flicked away his cigarette butt.

Somehow, this didn’t surprise Billy in the least. Joe never could let anything go. He just kept pushing and pushing until one of two things happened. Either Billy gave in without a fight, or he snapped, yelled, hit something, and then gave in. Always.

Almost always.

"For fuck’s sake, lemme sleep." Billy rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head.

It didn't help. He was awake now, and there was Joe. Watching him. He pushed the pillow away.

"Asshole," Billy informed him sourly, lying flat on his back and staring at the bland expanse of ceiling above him.

"Cunt," Joe shot back.

Billy wasn't playing this game. He so wasn't playing this game. Not now.

"Billy? Billy? Anybody hoooome?"

Billy, lying stiff and rigid, was not going to answer.

"I know what all this shit you’re giving me’s really about," Joe snorted. "It's too late to play the... the... fucking violated virgin. You were asking for it. You know you were."

"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" Billy said defensively, sitting up again, all good intentions forgotten of ignoring Joe for sure this time.

"You loved it. You begged me for it," Joe said coolly, casually, as if it were nothing. Billy flushed, but didn’t deny it.

"It was good, is that what you want me to say? It was fucking great! It always was! But you fucked me over, Joe. You fucked us over, the band over, every single fucking time!"

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Joe sniped nastily. "Oh, poor me, poor Billy, Joe left me all alone before I could leave the fucker first."

"Shut the fuck up," Billy said warningly, uncertainly. A thousand little betrayals had driven him to L.A.

"Shut the fuck up," Joe mocked in a wavering falsetto. "Shit, William, that's the best you can do? You're slipping, Billy, really slipping." He shook his head solemnly.

"Just get out of my goddamned room already!"

Joe stared him down, eyes gone flat and cold.

"But that's not the way we're playing this, Billy. I'm not going anywhere right now. Not like you did." The level, measured words chilled Billy as no angry tirade could have.

"Yet again, you went out of your way to fuck me over!"

"I _needed_ you!"

"Like you’d ever admit it sober," Billy muttered, turning on his side, away from Joe.

"I’m dead, William, that’s as fucking sober as it gets."

Billy sat up, pushed the pillow away, and met Joe’s cynical stare. "Fuck you, Joe," he said bitterly. "It's history. Ancient history. Dead and fucking buried history. So let it die already."

"You sold out," was the snarled reply. (Sold us out.) "You walked out." (Walked out on _me_.) The unspoken words were louder than the shouted ones.

"What about you, Joe? What about what you did?" Billy met his eyes easily, his own rage ample defense against the glare Joe leveled at him.

Billy had never been good with words. That was always Joe’s strength. When it came time to fight, to argue, for Billy to defend himself against the force of nature that was Joe Dick, that was where he failed. Fell flat on his face. Couldn’t parry the verbal barbs and pointed counterattacks.

Joe, now, Joe flung sharp words with the same casual cruelty he used with anything else that could make you bleed. And Billy bled, and Billy hurt, and Billy made Joe bleed with silence and absence.

But finally, now that neither of them would ever win, ever again, the words came easily, effortlessly.

" _You_ lied, Joe. About Bucky, about the tour, and then, and then you put a bullet through your brain. In front of the fucking camera. And I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to fucking close my eyes again without seeing you lying there with your fucking brains all over the fucking _pavement_ , Joe. Did you know that, huh? Is that what you wanted? Does that make you happy? _Does it?_

"That’s... that’s so far from buddies, Joe, that I don’t know what to call it," he said, softer now. Twenty years of history between them weighed down the schoolyard rebuke.

"You know I did it all for you, Billy," Joe returned mockingly. The truth behind the sarcasm was raw enough that Billy had to look away.

He shuddered.

"Stupid fuck," he said softly, not sure if he meant Joe or himself. Either way, he didn’t care. Yeah right. And those weren’t tears that pricked behind his eyes, just like it wasn’t grief that tightened his throat. He didn’t care at all.

When he looked back, Joe was gone.


End file.
